The Vancouver Sun from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada • 19

ENTE The Vancouver Sin MONDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 2003 B9c ENT 8 Plunge in to Opera Underwater Death of a princess theme floats through two cantatas Lloyd Dykk Asked how this relates to The Diana Cantata, she says, "Structure. Peter Hannan and Peter Hinton wrote The Diana Cantata taking into account the scopi and structure of Ino. Also, story. Both princesses are hunted down until death but are both deified in the afterlife, in their own Also, scoring. Hannan has reorchestrated Ino for striHl quartet and MIDI percussioa, and has written The Diana Cam tata for the same forces." The view it takes on Princess Diana is multi-faceted.

"In many MUSIC CRITIC ways, the piece is not so much about Princess Diana as it if about the response to Diana am her death. It asks us to reflect ph the event of her death and life as media event, as catharsis, as misplaced emotion, as a representation of our need for fairy tales. "In the piece, the character of .1 V' Princess Diana only exists as a visitor from the afterlife, but another character named Diana an EveryDiana sort of character questions her response to the Princess Diana phenomenon." The production sounds elaborate, stressing video and movement there are four dancers. An example of the effects the team is after is Ino starting her plunge from the cliff on stage arid finishing it on the screen. "The video allows us to see her flying past the cliff face and descending into the waters, as well as creating the underwater world for the rest of the piece.

The dancers act as a manifestation of the waves and energy of the water, the nereids and the tritons. There were a couple of dances written into the original score." In The Diana Cantata, the dancers act more as "chorus and reflection on the central character of Diana. I've created the movement in The Diana Cantata to both manifest and clarify the themes of each scene." Vancouver soprano Phoebe MacRae plays Ino. In The Diana Cantata, the title role is taken by Toronto mezzo-soprano Vilmf Modern Baroque Opera opens on Wednesday with a pair of staged cantatas that share a theme, the death of a princess: a rarely done work called Ino written by Georg Phillip Telemann in the 86th and last year of his life, and a new work called The Diana Cantata, based on Princess Diana. The project is called Opera Underwater, but don't expect it to be sung from a swimming pool.

Watery effects, projected on to a scrim, are, for director Kate Hutchinson, used figuratively. "Although a large part of Ino literally takes place underwater, a similar meditative quality of being underwater, or in another realm, runs through The Diana Cantata. I think of 'underwater' as the place of transformation." Telemann wrote a lot of water music but never lived to see Ino produced. It's written in the theatrical cantata style, as opposed to the chamber or church style. The action plunges right in, with no orchestral introduction at all, as Ino, reaching the highest point of a cliff, plunges over it holding her child, with her husband Athamas in close pursuit.

Hutchinson describes the story as proceeding from "a long, complicated mythical soap opera. The wrath of the goddess Juno has fallen upon Ino, due to her sister Semele's previous affair with Zeus, Juno's husband; the disrespect Ino's husband has shown towards a gift that Juno gave to him; and Ino's harbouring of Dionysus, the bastard offspring of Semele and Zeus in her palace. "For this, Juno has placed a curse of madness on Athamas, Ino's husband, and he has already killed his eldest son before hunting her down as the piece begins. She's cornered on the cliff, and her only means of escape is through suicide, which she chooses in preference to dying by her husband's hand. She leaps from the cliff with her youngest son in her arms.

I won't spoil it but the rest of the cantata takes place underwater." if- Indra Vitols, whose wor-k-, includes opera, oratorio, new music and cabaret. She was the first prize-winner of the 22nd Eckhardt-Gramatte National Music Competition. "She's fantastic," Hutchinson says. "Possibly the most astute and talented singer, and actor, I've ever worked with." -7 Marc Destrube is music director, Thomas Hassmann is the designer, lighting is by Alan Brodie, Andrew Olewine is choreographer and James Griffiths is videographer. Opera Underwater runs Wednesday through Saturday at 8 p.m.

at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre. Sun classical music critic ldykkpng.canwest.com A Phoebe MacRae in Opera Underwater, presented at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre Wednesday through Saturday. Miracles' eerie appeal outclasses competition Alex Strachan Pi 1L TV CRITIC shame, because as accomplished and respectable as CSI: Miami and Crossing Jordan are as procedural thrillers, there's plenty of room on network TV late on a Monday night for an old-fashioned spine tingler. Ulrich, who bears a striking physical and emotional resemblance to the post-21 Jump Street Johnny Depp, plays Paul Callan, a young priest assigned the responsibility of separating hoax from the genuine item, and one of the appealing traits about Miracles is the way it suggests that not everything can be explained in earthly terms, and not every story has to end neatly tied up in a bow and ribbon. That may seem antithetical to the very idea of a weekly TV series, but it is what Millennium and The X-Files managed to do when at their best: Present the audience with a mystery, provide a plausible explanation for that mystery, and then turn the plausible explanation on its ear with a seemingly implausible and yet possible alternative.

In the first episode, a young boy seems to be blessed with the power of healing, yet with every person he heals he becomes progressively more ill. Callan is inclined to believe the miracles he is witnessing are true the boy's healing ability appears to be genuine but he is suffering from a crisis of faith, and his superiors in the Catholic Church are convinced that the family's claims, like all claims of miracles, are pure hokum. Disillusioned and demoralized, Callan strikes out on his own, determined to find out if God exists and discover for Guns Ammo: Who knew archeology could be so exciting? It turns out there is something hidden away somewhere called "the item" shades of Alias' "Rambaldi artifact," a thingamajig of some kind that may not only explain the mystery of life on Earth, but could potentially bestow superhuman powers on whoever finds it. Some really, really Bad Men are out to get it, and it falls on Our Hero to stop them and save the world. I'm not entirely sure what "Veritas" refers to I think it's the name of the organization dear old dad works for but the standard TV cliches (whiny teen qomplaining about dad's never being there when he needed him, etc.) are all too familiar.

Veritas is obviously intended to be a safe, fun adventure the whole family can enjoy, but personally I find the whole affair rather vexing. Veritas airs Mondays at 8 p.m. on the New VI and KOMO-ABC. CHANNEL SURFING Chasing Cain II: Face, 8-10 p.m. (CBC) Three homicide detectives (Peter Outerbridge, Alberta Watson and Karen LeBlanc) investigate the stabbing of a young woman in Toronto's Caribbean community, in this plot-driven sequel to last year's successful made-for-TV movie.

Less gimmicky than most whodunits, and a reasonably solid alternative to the usual network TV fare. Fear Factor, 8-9 p.m. (CH Victoria, KING-NBC) Or you could watch contestants bob for objects while standing himself whether in fact miracles can or do happen. It's a cynical world view, entirely in keeping with the mood of the times Miracles is what Touched by an Angel might have been if it had been created by the people who made The Boys of St. Vincent and while not everyone might agree, I have a lot of time for any TV tale that asks viewers to question the world around them and not accept everything at face value.

Tonight's "boo factor" is provided by the unexplained, temporary disappearance from radar of a passenger jet echoes of Final Destination and the effect that gap in time has on the plane's passengers and crew. I've not seen the episode, but if it is even remotely as compelling as last week's soul searcher, it will be one more piece of evidence that Miracles deserves a better fate than that which befell Haunted, Brimstone, Sleepwalkers, The Others and any num-ber of other recent supernatural thrillers. Miracles airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on KOMO-ABC. Veritas: The Quest is another oddity, a kind of latter-day Young Indiana Jones crossed with Alias, about a bland, angst-ridden, middle-class teen (Ryan Merri-man) thrust into a life of passion and adventure after he learns his boring old dad (Alex Carter) is in reality an underground operative with an agency of super-secret archeologists with loose ties to the government.

The explains the hot babes and the family subscription to REUTERS Skeet Ulrich stars In a series that doesn't always provide neat answers. in 50 gallons of cows' blood. American Experience, 9-10 p.m. TV has always done ghost stories better than most mediums, and Miracles is no different. Judging from early evidence, this dark, moody anthology of the supernatural recalls the Millennium crossed with Mysterious Ways a sympathetic sleuth, in this case played by Skeet Ulrich, investigating claims of the paranormal, often with unpredictable results.

Also judging from early evidence, Miracles is going to need one to survive: Last week's debut finished a distant third in its time period in the U.S., behind CSI: Miami and Crossing Jordan, whose mysteries are grounded in reality and forensic science, and don't require leaps of faith to solve. Reviewers have been unkind to Miracles as well too dark, too moody and too grim appears to be the popular refrain which is a (KCTS-PBS) A profile ot Nobel Prizes winning mathematician John Nash. Joe Millionaire, 9-10 p.m. (Citytv, KCPOjFox) Or you could watch Joe narrow his choice to three women. Incidentally, were you aware he's actually a construction worker who earns $19,000 US a year? Star! Inside, p.m.

(Star!) A behind-the-scenes look at the making of Stargate SG-1, starring Richard Dean Anderson. Live, from your own back yard..